The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie [59]
‘So you have come back, M. Poirot?’
‘I have returned, Madame.’
‘You went to London?’
Poirot nodded.
‘You didn’t tell me you were going,’ said Lady Astwell sharply.
‘A thousand apologies, Madame, I am in error, I should have done so. La prochaine fois –’
‘You will do exactly the same,’ interrupted Lady Astwell with a shrewd touch of humour. ‘Do things first and tell people afterwards, that is your motto right enough.’
‘Perhaps it has also been Madame’s motto?’ His eyes twinkled.
‘Now and then, perhaps,’ admitted the other. ‘What did you go up to London for, M. Poirot? You can tell me now, I suppose?’
‘I had an interview with the good Inspector Miller, and also with the excellent Mr Mayhew.’
Lady Astwell’s eyes searched his face.
‘And you think, now –?’ she said slowly.
Poirot’s eyes were fixed on her steadily.
‘That there is a possibility of Charles Leverson’s innocence,’ he said gravely.
‘Ah!’ Lady Astwell half-sprung up, sending two cushions rolling to the ground. ‘I was right, then, I was right!’
‘I said a possibility, Madame, that is all.’ Something in his tone seemed to strike her. She raised herself on one elbow and regarded him piercingly.
‘Can I do anything?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he nodded his head, ‘you can tell me, Lady Astwell, why you suspect Owen Trefusis.’
‘I have told you I know – that’s all.’
‘Unfortunately, that is not enough,’ said Poirot drily. ‘Cast your mind back to the fatal evening, Madame. Remember each detail, each tiny happening. What did you notice or observe about the secretary? I, Hercule Poirot, tell you there must have been something.’
Lady Astwell shook her head.
‘I hardly noticed him at all that evening,’ she said, ‘and I certainly was not thinking of him.’
‘Your mind was taken up by something else?’
‘Yes.’
‘With your husband’s animus against Miss Lily Margrave?’
‘That’s right,’ said Lady Astwell, nodding her head; ‘you seem to know all about it, M. Poirot.’
‘Me, I know everything,’ declared the little man with an absurdly grandiose air.
‘I am fond of Lily, M. Poirot; you have seen that for yourself. Reuben began kicking up a rumpus about some reference or other of hers. Mind you, I don’t say she hadn’t cheated about it. She had. But, bless you, I have done many worse things than that in the old days. You have got to be up to all sorts of tricks to get round theatrical managers. There is nothing I wouldn’t have written, or said, or done, in my time.
‘Lily wanted this job, and she put in a lot of slick work that was not quite – well, quite the thing, you know. Men are so stupid about that sort of thing; Lily really might have been a bank clerk absconding with millions for the fuss he made about it. I was terribly worried all the evening, because, although I could usually get round Reuben in the end, he was terribly pig-headed at times, poor darling. So of course I hadn’t time to go noticing secretaries, not that one does notice Mr Trefusis much, anyway. He is just there and that’s all there is to it.’
‘I have noticed that fact about M. Trefusis,’ said Poirot. ‘His is not a personality that stands forth, that shines, that hits you cr-r-rack.’
‘No,’ said Lady Astwell, ‘he is not like Victor.’
‘M. Victor Astwell is, I should say, explosive.’
‘That is a splendid word for him,’ said Lady Astwell. ‘He explodes all over the house, like one of those thingamajig firework things.’
‘A somewhat quick temper, I should imagine?’ suggested Poirot.
‘Oh, he’s a perfect devil when roused,’ said Lady Astwell, ‘but bless you, I’m not afraid of him. All bark and no bite to Victor.’
Poirot looked at the ceiling.
‘And you can tell me nothing about the secretary that evening?’ he murmured